Ukraine's grain harvest likely to fall to 40 million tonnes this year

Ukraine is likely to reduce its grain harvest to about 40 million tonnes in 2012 from a record of 56.7 million in 2011 due to a fall in harvested area because of poor weather during winter grain sowing, analyst ProAgro said on Thursday. ProAgro said the wheat harvest was likely to fall to about 14 million tonnes this year from 22.3 million in 2011, because drought in July-November damaged more than 1 million hectares of the area sown for winter wheat.
"We forecast a fall in grain yields this year due to poor weather conditions. Poor weather combined with a smaller area sown for grains are the top reasons for the fall in the harvest," ProAgro director Mykola Vernytsky told Reuters. According to ProAgro estimates, the grain area is unlikely to exceed 15.42 million hectares this year, down from 16.05 million in 2011. The consultancy said area under wheat would fall to 5.5 million hectares in 2012 from 7.0 million in 2011.
Ukraine Farm Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk told Reuters this month that the former Soviet republic was likely to reduce grain production to 44-46 million tonnes, including 12 million tonnes of wheat. Analyst UkrAgroConsult put the 2012 grain harvest at about 45 million tonnes, including 14.5 million of wheat.
Winter wheat dominates Ukraine's wheat production, but a severe drought during the sowing has damaged at least 30 percent of the area, lowering the overall output. UkrAgroConsult said about a third of Ukraine's winter grain crops are in poor condition as of mid-January. It said some 83.3 percent of the sown area had sprouted compared with more than 90 percent at the same date a year earlier.
It said 67 percent of the sprouted crops were in good or satisfactory condition and 33 percent were in a poor state. The share of poor crops totalled 7 percent in January, 2011. Weather forecasters have said about 30 percent of the winter crops could be re-seeded this spring. ProAgro forecasts the reseeded area at 2 million hectares.
ProAgro said some of the damaged area under winter grains could be reseeded with maize, and the area under this commodity was likely to rise by 22 percent to 4.4 million hectares. Farm minister Prysyazhnyuk said last week the ministry had forecast a rise in the 2012 maize harvest due to an increase in the sowing area to about 4.3 million hectares. The consultancy also forecast a rise in the area under barley, oats, peas and oilseeds.